If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. One of the most important roles of a manager is to ensure everyone knows the destination. The most effective managers set expectations and assess their employees’ performance against those expectations, and take a coaching approach to helping them get to the destination. That’s exactly what you’ll learn to do in this course!
You will explore how to collaboratively develop expectations with those you lead. When you encounter expectations that are not being met, you’ll learn how to use "Coaching Algebra" to determine the underlying issues that are impeding performance, and how to respond as a manger-coach.
We look forward to you joining us as we explore these essential coaching topics!

RM

The courses in this specialization keep on getting better and better. I believe that I have never had a better grounding in what coaching is than in this series.

MW

Oct 21, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Instructor is very engaging and provides additional learning resources. Content very useful for long-time and new leaders and managers. Great specialization!!!!

À partir de la leçon

Course Overview & Designing Performance Expectations

This module provides an overview of the entire course and then moves into talking about performance expectations. We'll discuss the three primary constructs of performance: process, people, and practice, learn what elements make effective mission and vision statements, and begin talking about creating effective performance expectations for your team members. You will also learn how to define clear expectations for team members and compare expectations and standards.

Enseigné par

Kris Plachy

CEO and Founder & Instructor, Leadership Coach, LLC &

Transcription

[MUSIC] Welcome back, we've talked about mission, vision, and purpose for organizations, teams, and individuals. So these are big, important concepts that help us as leaders clarify for our teams the purpose behind the work we do every day. Expectations, if you recall from the funnel that we looked at earlier, is the next level we need to cultivate as leaders. And so in this segment, I want to talk with you about why expectations are so important. And really how to think about and design those expectations before we communicate them to our team members. One of the reasons why I started doing this work around expectations has a lot to do with some previous experience that I had. Many, many, many years ago I was a manager. And I worked in an environment that had a lot of measurements. Right? So we were able to measure what people did every day, very clearly, quite frankly. And as a result of that, what happened, because the organization I was working for was growing very rapidly, managers were not really called upon to lead their teams in a way that has more to do with behavior and habits, and engagement, sort of the soft skills, right? What managers will called to do was really sort of manage the numbers, and what happened because of that is we as a company didn't develop these really key leadership skills in people. What we developed were tacticians or technicians who could analyze data, and identify a problem, and tell people to fix it. And so, what happened is people were really really focused on the numbers, and the outcomes that people would generate, that staff would generate. But they didn't understand all the other triggers that influenced performance, like behavior, like attitudes, and other things that we're going to continue to talk about. And so, as the company grew, there was this deficit of leadership capability and a deficit of our ability to address those things, those behaviors that people demonstrated that really didn't have anything to do with numbers. In environments like that, if that's somewhere that you might work, what you might start to notice is that there can be people in an organization who are highly successful as it relates to those measured outputs. So we can think about sales. We can think about quantity of product. We can think about number of calls that people make or tickets that they fix or projects that they complete, whatever it is that we do every day at work that can be measured. So we can have people who are very successful at hitting those metrics and yet they are not great employees. They could be rude. They can be dismissive of other departments. They can be difficult to work with. They can be messy and sloppy with their work, but still hit the number. And then what happens in organizations when we've over-focused on the measurements, is we haven't really developed all these other behaviors that are really very important to the culture and the long-term performance of an organization. And so when we haven't developed our ability as managers to really manage and coach those things, we come up short. So that's sort of the background for that expectations work, because as a manager, somebody who manages people, you have this responsibility to really make sure that performance metrics are hit. Those are very important, but the same thing is true for those behaviors that we expect of people. It's not just the output, it's how are people showing up everyday, and are they really contributing to an organizational culture that we want. Right? So that's what expectations are about. Expectations are those high level, value- based, behavior-based characteristics that we look for in people that work for us. Expectations are things that often times don't change. They are sort of rules of engagement that you probably have regardless of where you work and regardless of who you managing, right? And I'll throw a few out just to kind of get you thinking about expectation. Be honest, focus on solutions, accept accountability for your work, communicate on a regular basis with internal and external clients, provide excellence in terms of service for internal and external clients: these are just some general examples of expectations. So these are sort of these broader, behavior-based, thought out elements that we expect of people who work for us, right? Now, because what happens to us in most of our management roles is we grow in a organization based on our technical competency, right? So if you're really good at engineering, or you're really good at computer science, or you're really good at sales, or you're really good at finance, you get promoted to a management position. And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, the challenge is that those technical skills are not what helps you be a fantastic leader. What helps you be a fantastic leader and ultimately coach is that you also have a strong sense of those behaviors that are really needed to provide a culture where the work can be done. And so, helping you as someone who manages people, really get clear about what your expectations are is a critical piece to process as we've been talking about it. I want to make sure that as you go through the rest of this course, you have really thought about what your expectations are and you're really, really comfortable with what they are. So that when you get to the point, which is the next sort of step here, of communicating them, you can do so in a way that you're feeling really confident, and you can reinforce those expectations through conversations and holding people accountable to their workload and to their outputs, not just what they measure, not just what the work is that they produce. But also, how they produce it, how they engage with others, how they engage with customers, how they communicate. These are the other things that are also so essential as we're looking at developing people and sustaining performance for our organization. So in our next segment, we're going to talk about what expectations look like and we're also going to contrast those to something that I call the manual. And these are a little bit different. These are sort of rules we have for people but oftentimes are uncommunicated. So that's what we're going to talk about in our next segment. So in summary, too much focus on the metrics that we use to govern the performance of our organization can lead to actually not managing overall performance, if we haven't set clear expectations. We can have a lot of people who hit metrics, who hit the actual numbers, but they aren't meeting those values, those behaviors, those performance expectations that are maybe softer, but also really, really drive the ultimate performance of the organization. Managers who have really good technical skills may not actually be effective leaders. So we have to help them understand that first of all managing people is a whole new skill set, [LAUGH] which is why you're taking this course, right, managing and coaching. Your technical expertise is valuable but it isn't necessary what helps drive the performance of the team. And really being able to step up into a role as a manager and leader and create a culture where people can get their work done, really is anchored in this ability for us to understand expectations. And we as managers and as leaders have to understand what our expectations are, and hold people accountable to those behaviors and those values. And how they work and how they work together to help us all produce the results that we're looking for.